Part 17 - A Short Lesson and An End to Guessin'
"What did you do." It wasn't really a question. Not one that needed a response, anyway. That was fine. Strife wasn't really up to answering it as he watched his uncle on the prowl around the room. "Look, Unc, I know it's easy to blame me"
"Fun, too." Ares slowly stepped around his nephew, who was busy trying to look totally relaxed and casual while hanging upside-down, manacled at the ankles and dangling from the ceiling. "But this just smacks of your involvement."
"I resent that! Just 'cause Jox is suddenly divine don't mean I had a hand in it!" Strife protested, folding his arms over his chest to properly express his outrage. "Ya think I stick my nose in ALL the mischief goin' on? I wouldn't have time ta scratch my ass properly if I did!"
"And yet, here we are." Ares stopped right in front of the Mischief Maker close enough to feel his breath, their noses just shy of touching. "Care to explain?"
"This one's all on you, Big Guy." Strife snorted in his uncle's face. "Grind me inta dust, turn me inta a fig tree, whatever, but I had nothin' ta do with this." A thoughtful look flashed over his face. "Well, maybe not nothin', I mean in a cosmic sorta sense I guess it is my fault. If I hadn'ta brought Joxie here in the first place, then he never woulda been in yer bathroom �"
"My bathroom made Joxer a god." For Ares to sound any more incredulous, he'd have to have been two people. "Right. He must've scrubbed the Tartarus out of it to get that as a reward."
"Not yer bathroom, exactly." Strife rolled his eyes. A sentient bathroom was one thing. An omnipotent one was something else altogether. Joxer, still sitting back on the bed (though now of his own power and someone else's balance) in Aesclepius' temple, slapped his hand over his mouth to keep a particularly loud bray of laughter at bay. Omnipotent bathroom! Strife almost had a giggle at that, too, but the imminent pounding he was facing kept it quiet. "Ya know how you like to relax after a hard day-a rampagin' an' destruction?"
Ares only quirked one eyebrow up to him.
"Well, so do all us kids� and now, so does Jox." Since his uncle made no move to indicate he got it, Strife sighed and held his hand out. Ares' carved silver chalice appeared in his grasp and Ares eyes widened a hair, his scowl relaxing into a studious mien. Eureka, Strife snarked to himself. "You gotta be more careful where you leave this, Unc. This time, it was Jox, but it coulda been�"
"Shut up." Ares took hold of his cup and eyed inside of it, as if there would be something out of the ordinary in there. "He was in my bath, was he�?" A sharp spike of arousal shivered through him. Joxer. Naked. Wet. My Temple. He was going to have to do something about this and soon, or else completely split apart with desire. It had never been this bad. Never. Not even with Aphrodite and that had been pretty bad. But even then, it hadn't left him in a state of perpetual arousal. He was starting to believe his pants would never fit right again.
"Unc, ya think maybe I can get down now? All the blood's rushin' to my head an' as great a buzz as that is�" Anything else was cut off by a hard glare.
"Be happy this is all I'm doing to you," Ares grumbled, turning his goblet over and over in his hand. "Zeus isn't going to be happy."
"There's news." Strife snorted again and this time Ares smiled a little. "How ya gonna break it to 'im ?"
"As rudely as possible." Ares chuckled darkly, imagining the look on his father's face when presented with another new god who was, yet again, not Hercules. He gave a jovial slap to Strife's exposed belly, which sent him swinging a little, and dimmed the torchlight of the dark and dank oubliette that he'd flashed them into. "I've got to get back to Joxer. He's probably still in shock. It isn't every day he gets made into a god."
